Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Review (PS5) – I’ll never say it’s bad that we have all these ports of older games on modern consoles. Inherently I think it’s great that players who maybe played these games when they were younger and players who maybe never got a chance to do so can play classic titles without needing to search around for ways to play older games.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was one of my favourite Star Wars games growing up, and in that spirit I think it’s great that Aspyr Media has put in the work to make it playable on PS5 and PS4 so that anyone wanting to check out this classic would be able to do so on their modern console in a convenient way.
That this port exists and that it succeeds in giving you a way to play this game on PS5 is not my problem. My problem is that it unfortunately feels like the easiest, and the worst way, to play Star Wars: Bounty Hunter.
Which ultimately balances out to it being an average port for an above-average game.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (PS5) – An Average Port For An Above-Average Game
Too Much Has Been Lost
You know how old films just don’t look the same on modern televisions? Any retro game fan will be quick to remind you the same is true for video games, and in the worst of cases it can feel like the atmosphere is totally lost from a game when it resembles the sharpened images of modern resolutions more than the grainy softened look of the old days.
I wouldn’t say the atmosphere is totally lost in Bounty Hunter – the score does a lot of heavy lifting, which thanks to it being all Star Wars music means it sounds great pretty much the whole time – but a lot of atmosphere has been lost, too much.
The sharp edges and that missing grain make its visual design issues stand out in more ways than it should. Admittedly, while Bounty Hunter was one of my favourite games growing up, playing it again in this setting has had me realize how debatable it is that it aged well.
More often than not it’s an ugly game to look at, with some standout levels in the opening half of the game and a lot of bad-looking brown in the second half. That I can play Bounty Hunter at 4K is doing nothing to make my experience playing this new port any better.
Bounty Hunter still sounds great regarding the effects and voice acting, and as I already said the music does wonders for the experience. But the visuals almost never did anything for me other than make me yearn for a CRT, or to even just play the previous PS4-only port or more accurately emulated version of Bounty Hunter.
Which is what I did, as a point of comparison. While this port doesn’t have any of the quality of life changes made in Aspyr’s port, and plays exactly how the game did on PS2, the difference was immediate even on my 4K TV.
Take that as my nostalgia talking if you must, but even though it’s been a while since I went back to Bounty Hunter, I never thought of it as an ugly game until playing this version of it.
One visual change that I will class as an actual improvement is the lighting upgrades and the way blaster shots look traveling across levels. It does look noticeably better and seeing how that impacts the darker parts of the game is cool. But the lighting from blaster shots doesn’t totally cut it to alleviate my other visual issues.
Also as a side note, that PS4 version is still available for purchase at time of writing, so it seems that at least for players who want the option of the older-everything, it’s there for them.
Three Steps Forward, One Step Back
My gripes over the visuals aside, when I went back to compare the older PS4 version of Bounty Hunter, I really, really felt just how much better Aspyr’s new port is to play.
The modern controls make a massive difference that do make the game far easier to pick up and play without having to rewire your brain to remember how to play PS2 games. However if you prefer that experience, you can also revert the controls to their classic mapping, and I think it’s great that the option is there.
I won’t be using it, but I’m glad it’s there. Unfortunately it’s about the only option you get for adjusting the gameplay to your preferences, specifically regarding the camera control.
The difficulty that went along with controlling the camera in the original game remains one of its pain points, but somehow that remains true even with the modern controls. The camera doesn’t behave the same way of course, but it still behaves badly in a whole new host of ways.
Locking-on to enemies is a more tedious affair than it should be when you’re trying to re-position for a fight. The same goes for switching from one enemy to the next once you have successfully locked-on to them.
There’s also no system to properly save while in the middle of a level, something that was honestly surprising for a game that historically is challenging. It also just feels silly to know I’ll lose my place in a level unless I keep the game open and my console on rest mode, for a game that came out in 2002 while I’m playing it on modern hardware in 2024.
I also do have to give a mention to all the ways Aspyr Media utilized the DualSense controller and its features. The haptic feedback and adaptive triggers for each gun do feel good. I’ve always felt more immersed by these features in other games and I’m happy to report the same is true for Bounty Hunter, even if battling with the camera takes me out of it.
Some Things Remain Timeless
I’ve been doing a lot of complaining (that I feel quite justified in) but even with my issues, I’d still suggest you pick up Bounty Hunter if you’re a fan of the original and/or if you’re a Star Wars fan who never got around to playing this back in the day.
You get to play as Jango Fett for crying out loud, and not just that, you go through the origin story of how Jango became the template for the Republic’s clone army, how he acquired his Slave I ship, how he met Zam, the changling bounty hunter who he’d kill in Attack of the Clones for failing to kill Padme.
And you get to fly around with his jetpack, shooting missiles off your back. That’s all just plain cool in my book, and it never stops being fun or feeling good to execute. That’s also why the modern controls make such a huge difference.
They remove a bit of the friction the game provides in a way that improves the experience for players and does so in-line with the modern industry.
Dual wielding his iconic blasters and mowing down thousands of alien goons while flying and jumping around was fun in 2002, and it’s been fun for the last 22 years.
An Average Port For An Above-Average Game
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a good game – that has remained true and it is made better with this port in significant ways, like the modern control scheme.
However what’s lost visually impacted my experience across the whole game, to the point where I was having fun but didn’t want to look at the game by the time I was into the back half of it. I’ll probably keep playing it now that I’ve written this review, but I’ll likely just replay the first few chapters because those looked the best to me.
And while the modern controls are a huge quality of life upgrade, it seemed like other quality of life updates were simply left on the table.
I should also mention that I didn’t really experience many bugs save for one that made it impossible for me to collect secondary bounties. It was happening for most of my playthrough, but just like the guy who was able to fix his computer before Crowdstrike pushed out the patch, turning it off and on again (closing and opening the game, restarting my console) did fix the issue eventually.
All in all, what I feel is left with Aspyr Media’s fully-native port of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is an overall average port for an above average game.
So if you love Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you can grab this new version and very likely have a great time revisiting this classic unless you’re like me with the visuals. If you’ve never played it, this is a more than fine version to try it out for the first time, because you won’t know what’s missing.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is available on PS5 and PS4 on August 1, 2024.
Review code generously provided by the publisher.